How Drones Can Improve Medical Care Access

Friday, July 31, 2015

Drones seem perfect for quick and fast delivery of all sorts of cargo. So why not biomedical specimens?

Well, before the medical community goes down that road, researchers with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wanted to know whether an actual drone flight, including a shaky takeoff and bumpy landing, would affect the specimens.

Timothy Amukele, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins, said he was interested in boosting access to medical care. He cited “decades of research” showing that poor access to medical care is more expensive and increases poor patient outcome, such as suffering or even death. “If we now have a cheaper way to move samples, it’s a good thing, especially for patients who are hard to reach, whether they live in rural areas or places without good roads,” he said.

But there hasn’t been much rigorous, systematic research into the impact of drone transport on specimens, according to the new study’s authors. Blood samples in particular could be impacted by the launch and landing; a drone has to be thrown in the air, and it lands on its bottom side. Amukele said he thought that at the very least, fragile platelets would be affected.

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